We’re fortunate in that not only did we get to select the site for our house, we designed and built it ourselves. (the fact that we ran out of money before we finished is beside the point). When you’re laying out a farm, it may seem that you have all the room you could possibly
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When it comes to moving cows, November can be pretty boring. Every day it’s walk out, put up a new “break”, and move the cows. They get moved once a day this time of year because it’s not terribly busy, the weather is pleasant and they seem to enjoy the routine. Inside though, the
I’m still painting the kitchen and mudroom, in preparation for the holidays. I started in the mudroom, and I’m moving towards the kitchen, and stopped for the evening. The orange on the right is the color of the dirt here in Virginia, but the idea of the having the kitchen and mudroom match our red
The holidays are always a big deal around here. In fact this year, the holiday season has already started, and as usual, I’m not ready. Last weekend the youngest daughters had a bonfire. This weekend the oldest kids are having a paintball tournament here. The following week is our turn. Then it’s Thanksgiving. So what
The term “grass fed” gets kicked around a lot, but when it shows up on a beef (or any other) meat label, it’s what is called a marketing claim. There are a lot of marketing claims and there are different levels of verification for them (that’s important to remember.) They include things like Certified Angus,
This girl is one of our favorite cows. U16 is out of our Old Number One cow, who was with us for many years. U16 is raising her fifth calf this year. She also shows one of the problems we have with ear tags. They are the form of animal ID that we rely on
Yesterday Scott and I worked cows. Typically a cause of extreme domestic strife, we’ve gotten pretty good at it, our cows are pretty good, and our facilities are pretty good. We draw blood for pregnancy test, remove fly tags and make sure that their ear tags are legible. Usually, you just remove the old ear
While it’s hard to get through a winter without feeding hay, there are quite a few things we can do to make sure that our cows get quality forage year round. Fortunately there are some grasses that do quite well in the late fall and early spring, so that we can cut back on our
We really don’t like moving farm equipment any more than we have to, but sometimes it just has to happen. Here’s Scott, moving the drill between two farms. It’s hard to see in the picture – I was driving the pilot car – but he takes up both lanes, so there isn’t much room for
I’m not sure why it is, but our Murray Grey cows have never had twins, but our Red Angus cows more than make up for it. We’ve ended up with two sets this year, as far as we know. “As far as we know” is the bad part. With beef cattle, there are a couple